TWCL

[james113]

Hello there,

Back when I was creating a webcomic website for independent manga, I had to search through about ...say 35-50 before I could find one that actually seemed to meet the criteria.

That was, to find and include any webcomics, usually but not limited to manga, that had at least 20 pages, were consistent/up-to-date/not dead and either had or had plans to have a very big story; quality or skill-level of art not taken into account.

I'm talking about the webcomics that are gunning to have a store and forums/fan-community. The artists that have 6 or more novels written or planned and have no other way to bring those stories to the world.

There are some seriously good stories out there told through webcomics that no one knows about...I wanted to create a thread dedicated to those stories, even if there is a lot of shameless self-promotion. (if you're good you usually know you're good, damnit)

So I guess the tags on the search would be "Hidden Gems" + "Up and Coming" + "Plans to or aspires to be very big" + "Has written, or has planned, pretty much 6 novels to tell through their webcomic" + "Are not dead"

[Lord Pandar]

First person to nominate their own comic must wear the shame hat for all eternity.
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S*P*Q*R

[TBROtomo]

My favorites:

http://requiem.seraph-inn.com

http://www.terra-comic.com

[angryfaerie]

http://togm.thecomicseries.com/ - The Other Grey Meat is a post-zombie apocalypse story that isn't anything you'd think it would be. Seriously.

http://conies.thecomicseries.com/ - CONIES is incredibly well written and is the story of very special people who work for a circus. I believe I first heard about because Warren (Transmetropolitan) Ellis mentioned it on Facebook.
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[Tskingdom]

http://pihlaja.net/kirjoitukset/Kirjoitukset/

...What language problem?

EDIT: Just thought to place the link somewhere with thin excuse, "to mention" because that's quite nice looking comic. I don't know if the creators do have plans to go abroad some day or not.
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Because some things are for nice people and some things are for nice people with a taste for occasional sightseeing in a Land of Disgust and Sick. http://tskingdom.com/

[AdamC]

My--

Lord Pandar wrote:

First person to nominate their own comic must wear the shame hat for all eternity.

Aww.

[Varethane]

Tskingdom wrote:

http://pihlaja.net/kirjoitukset/Kirjoitukset/ ...What language problem? EDIT: Just thought to place the link somewhere with thin excuse, "to mention" because that's quite nice looking comic. I don't know if the creators do have plans to go abroad some day or not.

If they did ever release a translation, I'd be interested to see it-- the story looks fairly interesting.
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[smbhax.com]

I want that damn hat.
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[Lavenderbard]

Someone else already claimed the hat?

Dang. I had a render going for 48+ hours and the keyboard conked out in the middle of it. (Which happens regularly... it always comes back if I turn the computer off and reboot, but I have to wait for the render to finish first.) Ah, well. I probably don't qualify anyway because of the "not dead" requirement. I'm not alive yet.

"Has written, or has planned, pretty much 6 novels to tell through their webcomic"

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, because sequential art takes a lot more pages to tell the same amount of story as words do. So do you mean a prose novel worth of story times six, or do you mean a graphic novel worth of story times six?
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[dpat57]

Lavenderbard wrote:

Dang. I had a render going for 48+ hours and the keyboard conked out in the middle of it.

Gott in Himmel!
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[Lavenderbard]

Just for fun, dpat, why don't we take a look and see why my renders take so much longer than yours do.

Here is a small version of one of my recent pages. (Super sneak-peek exclusive preview for y'all! Never before shown in public!)


The insert panels only took 3-4 hours to render, IIRC. I'm guessing that's still longer than dpat's renders. Why? Well, the fact that there are probably more polygons in just the uniform shirt here than in every shot put together on any of dpat's pages (going by the ones that appear in dpat's sig) might have something to do with it.

But even more time consuming than all those polys for the computer is the physics of the light. I've got multiple lights, all casting shadows, and all responding to each surface in the shot as if it's made from a different substance: penetrating the skin before scattering, softened and diffused by the surface texture of the uniform shirt, glinting off the metal, etc.

The full page shot here is the reason I posted this particular page as my example. Like the render I just finished, it took over 48 hours.

This would be because, firstly, polygons again -- more polygons in just my handbuilt space armor than in... yadda, yadda. Secondly, this scene is illuminated primarily by the exhuaust of the space ship engines -- so I'm using lights with a complicated multiple-color gel on them to create a raging inferno look. But the real clock killer is in that I've got reflections calculated across curved surfaces -- both on certain sections of the spaceship hull (check out the area down by the feet) but also on the space armor. Notice how the grey parts of the space armor react differently to the light than the black bits? The grey bits are highly reflective. There's a shot of this same character wearing the same armor inside, under very different lighting conditions, in my art gallery...



If you look down on the space armor collar, you can see his face reflected in it. Well, the underside of his face. Click on the thumb for a larger version that also goes a bit lower so you can see all of the reflection.

Anyway, the fact that I've got curved reflective surfaces adjacent to and reflecting onto curved reflective surfaces practically gives my render engine a heart attack.

... And it isn't always too happy with me about some of the other effects I try pull off, either.
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[dpat57]

Frak, I'm embarrassed by the minuscule amount of work (I use the term "work" loosely) that I put into my alleged comics, compared with your devotion. And yes you're using much, much smarter software, firing on all cylinders.

No rendering for me, instant cheap gratification and jpg snapshots.
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[Lavenderbard]

dpat57 wrote:

Frak, I'm embarrassed by the minuscule amount of work (I use the term "work" loosely) that I put into my alleged comics, compared with your devotion.

Uh... I don't really work very hard.

I might put a bit more time and attention into each page, (and a whole lot more technological oomph,) but I produce pages at a very slow rate. Everything considered, you probably work much harder than I do, and you certainly accomplish a lot more.

And as for your comics being "alleged"... You are the one that can prove your comics exist. Mine still might end up no more than a mirage.

But I think I'll just keep on as I have been, anyhow.
It's more me.
And I think the results are kinda pretty.
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[hollylaing]

TBROtomo wrote:

My favorites: http://requiem.seraph-inn.com http://www.terra-comic.com

Thanks for the props!
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[katastrophe]

I've never been entirely clear on what manga is or isn't, but some that seem in the right stratosphere from off my reads list:

The Meek
War of Winds
Outsider
True Magic
Runners
Galaxion
Darken

Er, that's on the first pass, based vaguely on story-seriousness and art. My reads list has... a few more comics than this. Yes. Just a wee few.

Anyway.

Quote:

I had a render going for 48+ hours...

Holy crap.

<technical, probably dull for non 3D art people>

When I was still rendering on my MacBookPro, I could have renders go up to an hour or two, if I got fancy with the lights. And lo, I cursed a lot. Motion blur renders took up to a day, which meant basically I didn't do them; I was producing three comics per week at the time, a day for one panel did not happen.

Then my husband built me a quadcore Hackintosh and I whine if the render's not done in five minutes. Let's hear it for throwing money at your problems!

However -- while I'm working with equally high-poly models (just peeking at your gallery, we may be using some of the same models) I'm using a pretty different art style, and a lot of my early effort was devoted to streamlining render time. I don't do fancy 3D lightsets -- most of my renders are 2D-looking, and I like it that way. Reflective stuff? I could live without it. And so on. I'll go out of my way for certain panels, the ones that really matter, but the stuff that's just two people talking or drinking or whatever, I focus on poses and facial expressions and figure people will forgive low render quality.

Total time per panel for me would probably be 1 1/2 to 2 hours right now -- an hour or a bit more posing, average, and maybe half an hour rendering, tweaking poses, and re-rendering until I'm happy. I pretty well never get it right the first time. Another reason I had to cut my render time. The occasional panel takes longer -- especially if I'm doing something I haven't tried before with lights or whatever -- but in general, that's all I can afford to spend.

Yeah, I'm pretty much a hack.

</technical>
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